The break-up wasn't that bad, just shocking. For one, she didn't expect him to make the first move. She had never been the one dumped before. She had always been the one doing the dumping. The other thing was the breakup made it undeniable.
She had plenty of excuses. Her 20s were expiring. It was hard for anyone to maintain their college figure at 29, but the fact that she had been a gym girlie at 22 and had left that behind was not a factor she wanted to acknowledge. She worked out everyday bak then. She counted calories. She never liked either of those things, but she knew that she needed to do them. Had she forgotten? Gotten complacent? Just didn't care anymore? Those are my questions, not ones she had ever thought to ask herself.
There was plenty of blame on him, too. He wasn't making her feel beautiful, so she wasn't going to put in the effort to be beautiful for him. Why break herself at the gym when he wasn't going to appreciate the results?
Her favorite thing to unload the blame on was the job at the brewery, and this one was probably the most accurate of all the culprits she would willingly point a finger at. On top of the fact that it was part of her job to know the product, finishing a shift in the taproom was next to impossible without putting a couple away; the regulars were insistent. When she first started, she tried to turn them down a couple of times, but their disappointment was apparant, and she quickly learned that a drinking buddy got better a better tip. Yeah, they were obviously flirting with her, but they were married men in their 50s and 60s just trying to flex their flirting muscles so they didn't completely attrophey through the years of marriage. All of them were harmless, and the majority of them were actually decent conversationalists with a couple beers, so she became a drinking buddy, and 2 or 3 and then 4 or 5 beers in a shift became the norm. The other perc was that she was encouraged to take a four pack of tall boys home with her every night, and almost immediately she learned that she could trade two of those with the guys packing up their food truck across the street for a nice greasy meal to sop up the pints of beer the regulars had forced on her.
So that became the routine 4 or 5 days a week, depending on her schedule. Get to work, down some beers, eat something greasy on the way home, plop down on the couch, and polish off the two remaining tall boys, sleep, wake up at noon, repeat. She got used to getting home and going to bed pretty bloated every night; finally getting to take off her jeans was always a highlight of the day. Soon she was letting the button out before she walked in her apartment, then it became on the ride home, and soon she was undoing it before getting her greasy exchange from the food truck boys. That's when she got the nick-name "gordita", which she knew to be term of endearment. It was a little embarrassing, but she couldn't help that she worked at a brewery. It was inevitable that she would get bloated in her line of work, and it was so obviously just a bloat. It didn't matter that she didn't use to have to unbutton her pants after a shift. It didn't matter that those jeans were getting harder to put on before her shift. Yeah sure, she wasn't stupid. She had probably put on a pound or two. Like she said, she wasn't in her early 20s anymore, and maybe her eating a drinking habits weren't the best recently, but when push came to shove: She was just bloated.
It wasn't long after she switched to working in yoga pants (it was crazy how small they made larges these days) that they had the conversation. It was a standard break-up convo: "we're not in the same phase", "we want different things", "I still really care about you", etc. However, somewhere in the middle, sandwiched between platitudes, he did slip in the subtlest "and you're just not really taking care of yourself like you used to" or maybe it was "you stopped putting in the effort", she didn't remember exactly - it was after her shift - but she knew what he meant, and the next morning, that was all she remembered. That day she turned down the beers - she was candid about her reasoning and they were her drinking buddies so they understood, and they were loyal clientel so they actually tipped better than usual - and she knew that the food truck boys would be expecting a beer, so she obliged while turning down the heaping greasy plate - they were equally as concerned for their sad gordita. It was an uncommonly sombre and introspective train ride home. The first completely sober one in quite a while.
When she entered her apartment, she went right up to her full-lenght mirror to finally, soberly take account of the damage done. The first thing she noticed was she was still bloated, which didn't really make sense. She'd hardly eaten anything the entire day, but her belly was still sticking out and pressing against her high-waisted yoga pants. She also noticed a little roll sticking out between the bottom of her crop-top and the top of her pants. That's when she worked up the courage to roll down the high waist of her pants to really get a look.
She had to suck in to comfortably peel the stretched fabric off her belly and when she let out there was a visible bounce and jiggle of soft fat. She poked and prodded and pinched to make absolutely sure, because she was still in denial and disbelief. She was on the verge of admitting to herself that she had developed a textbook beer belly. It was round and soft and disproportionate to the rest of her body which really had not changed that much. Looking at it for the first time in an earnst attempt at sober acceptance, she was surprisingly nonplussed. It occurred to her that she was not so much ignoring the growing problem all this time, as much as she was just uninterested.
She plopped down on the couch with her belly still out in the open and watched as it rested on her lap. She groped and grabbed it for another minute or two before having the real epiphany of the night: she really wished it was full. She suddenly regretted abstaining all day. She regretted not getting her end of the exchange with the food truck boys. She realized that she really enjoyed her routine of coming home feeling ready to burst and lazily plopping down on the couch with a full, heavy belly. It was cozy, it was comfortable, it felt right, and she really really really wished she had something to fill her newly accepted beer belly with. She grabbed some snacks out of her sparse cubbards and a beer that had some how remained hidden in her fridge and finished everything before going to bed, and while she didn't go to bed hungry by any means, but she also didn't go to bed feeling full and heavy. She never really realized how much she liked that feeling until this rare night where it wasn't the case.
That night was a turning point. Before, she had been passively bloating and filling herself, but now that the feeling was identified, she was actively pursuing it. She was revelling in it. She started pouring herself heavier beers when the regulars insisted on her having one. She began shamelessly asking for an extra side from the food truck boys. She was even regularly getting herself dessert on her way home from work. On off days she was staying home and filling herself with door dash. She loved the warm, passive safety of a full belly.
Yes, she had a beer belly before, but it was just enough for her to notice it. Just a small mound of new fat over her old, fit body, but now that the desires had been consciously formed, she started to really put on the pounds. An inconcealable beer gut was on its way.
